9th grade (age 14) – high school nerd

Entering Belmont High School as the classic uncool kid (exactly from the movies).

Kinda nerdy and dorky, didn’t have cool clothes or cool haircut, still short, small and scrawny. It’s just like in the movies. 9th graders are at the bottom of the totem pole. We were basically still kids. 10th graders were just a step up. Whereas the older 11th and 12th graders had more grown-up bodies and cool grown-up clothing (purchased from being to have jobs), and confidence and friends.

High school in the ghetto

Belmont High School and its gang activity.

Going to a high school in the ghetto is quite the experience. For starters, I’d like to say that our school location was used in a lot of media. There’s a movie called Training Day (starring Denzel Washington) about gangs in the LA area that was shot by our high school. There were also rap music videos that were shot at our high school, and even some of my friends were asked to be the background people in it. (Since they made it look authentically more “gangster”.)

High school kids are age 14-18 which is prime age for gang activity. It seems many are joining gangs left and right. And also many others who are actively refusing. You really have to choose as it’s going to change how you live in high school. Who you hang out with, what kind activities you end up doing, and probably what you end up doing after school.

Our school was notorious for gang activity. I’ll spit some facts and stories below for an idea:

• We have school police. A dedicated police force just for our school. They have guns and everything to deal with every kind of trouble-making student and also armed gang members.
• We have had bomb threats before. One day, on the PA system they announced that everybody had to evacuate the school and wait on the streets. People were standing around confused and then you see a big LA SWAT van roll up with the words “BOMB SQUAD” on it. Turns out somebody planted a bomb in the bathroom. I’m guessing either a mischievous suicidal kid or he was doing it as part of a gang initiation.
• Gang initiations range from the usual “jumping” (where the whole gang beats you up for a bit), to asking you to do really dangerous things to prove loyalty, like killing a rival gang member or being an accomplice in a gang activity (like drive by or robbery). Usually for the girls, it can be to lure a rival gang member to a vulnerable location (where he’s killed) or she just opens her legs for the gang or the gang leader.
• The really bold gangs can demand a cop killing as gang initiation. This happened as a student shot a cop in the parking lot as part of joining his gang. Luckily for the cop, he was carrying tons of items to his car and since they were too heavy…he put on his bulletproof vest just because he ran into the student. The student had a gun and the cop has his hands full that he couldn’t respond in time. The bullet hit him in the chest (armored area) and he lived. BUT our school went into full lockdown and made the news. The entire Los Angeles police department sent hundreds of cops to search our entire neighborhood looking for the shooter. They also put snipers on our school roofs and cops all over all our hallways. We were ordered to stay in our classes until they let us leave. We were having a blast, being stuck in one class for 6 hours just talking and telling jokes while our teacher was trying to figure out what was going on. I think they did find the kid.
• There’s also mistaken identity killings. Sometimes a gang member shoots and kills the wrong kid because he looked like someone else. It’s hard to tell because many gang members all dress the same…bald head, big white shirt with blue denim shorts and high white socks with some Vans or Nike Cortez. It’s the classic gangster uniform. And it’s sad because some kids only dress like gangsters so they wouldn’t be messed with.

Disgusting stories of poor parenting

Almost always, whenever you have a problem child…you can always track the cause directly back to the parenting. It is ALWAYS the parents. I’ll share some more stories and facts below:

• Triplets (3 boys) – all named Juan Melendez. What a stupid idea. They were 15 years old and still not yet potty trained. Would sometimes pee or poop right in the middle of class.
• One girl dressed too slutty. Came to class every day wearing very little. It confused teachers because she was a good student, did her homework and tried hard in class. When they called in her mom, her mom was dressed even more provocatively. This parent-teacher meeting went nowhere as the mother didn’t see anything wrong and felt it was her right to decide what’s ok and not ok for her daughter. One week the daughter uncharacteristically didn’t show up at school for the whole week and the teachers felt something was wrong. The cops were called out to the house and realized something horrible. The mom was prostituting out her own daughter. And when the girl refused, the mother tied her up and refused to let her go to school. Instead she tortured her…tied her up and burned cigarettes on her, beat her up and let other men have their way with her. Girl was rescued and put in foster care.
• Some kid died in class from sniffing airplane glue. Everybody thought he was sleeping but actually he died. Turns out his parents were deadbeats too.
• Student was harassing girls at school, aggressively hitting on them and hollering as they walked by him in the hallways. Teacher called his dad in, and his dad hit on the teacher on the street not knowing she was the teacher arriving there to meet with him about his son.
• Sometimes kids didn’t go to school for a long time, and their parents didn’t make them or didn’t know about it. (They just let their kids play video games or hang around the streets all day.) After months of missing school, they usually send child social services to the home to take the kid away (or at least threaten to do so).

Our school was also a reject school

In bad neighborhoods, a “reject school” is a school that takes unwanted kids from other schools. For example…a student does something REALLY bad at his school (like stabbing his teacher, or repeatedly selling drugs, etc)…they will move him to another school. In hopes that he loses his social circle, or not around so many bad kids like him, and is more able to reform. In this regard, it’s a GOOD reject school. This was our school.

But there are also BAD reject schools. Where they just take the absolutely most horrible and most unwanted kids. The kids that nobody wants and probably already kicked out of several schools. You just send him to the pit of criminals in a school that holds them all. In this regard, the system has given up entirely on them and expects them to be in jail if not dead.

What do you find in the worst reject schools?

• Kids smoking weed right in the hallways in front of teachers. They were often allowed to do whatever they wanted as long as they weren’t hurting anybody.
• Teachers wearing bulletproof vets to class and also escorted to their cars everyday.
• Terrible sports teams. You would think a school full of the biggest baddest kids would have the toughest football teams but no. Their grades are so horrible, they don’t qualify for athletics.
• Kids from smaller gangs have to lay low so as not to give their identity away to bigger gangs. This can curtail them from trying to sell drugs at their new school.
• The teachers and teaching staff are more like really tough prison guards. Having to be equally tough to command respect from those kids. There has been many legendary stories of even female teachers running down kids and tackling them to the ground as they tried to ditch school.

PASSIONATE vs BROKEN teachers

Many teachers applying to a ghetto school usually come in with this fantasy that…through their undying love and support…they can transform even the worst and most helpless of kids into model citizens, and perhaps inspire even the Albert Einstein or nobel prize winner from the ghetto neighborhoods. It’s an old fairy tale long glorified by movies time and time again.

And usually it’s white teachers from middle class backgrounds that are most susceptible to this delusion. They come in here hoping to “make a change, make a difference” in the same way that many white people love going to Africa to give back to the poor.

The reality is that the students don’t relate or identify with them…and it’s obvious these teachers don’t truly understand the students and what they’re going through. They talk different, they think different, they act different. It’s a bridge too far to cross. We’re also talking about kids who live in 100% ethnic neighborhoods and the only white people they see are the cops. And now you’re a white teacher. Well…no thanks, you’re just another white authority figure. They aren’t going to relate to that or connect with you.

Imagine you coming in as a teacher, and you really want to help these kids. But instead they disrespect you. Talk back to you. Call you names. Throw things at you. Maybe even try to fight you or key your car. You start to seriously wonder why you aren’t just teaching in your own neighborhoods where you grew up and kids learned from their parents how to trust and respect adults…and that these kids have much better chance to be successful in life (fulfilling your personal mission as a teacher). You wonder if these kids are beyond saving or even worth saving. What happens next can be really happy or really sad.

Some of these teachers stay true to their mission and swear to keep their hearts open for the kids. And it actually works. While they don’t understand what ghetto kids are going through, the kids can see that they care and they mean nothing but positivity. The kids start to open up, be vulnerable, bond with them, even take them on as a role model…and turn their lives around. Going on to big university, landing a nice job, and leaving the ghetto behind forever.

Other teachers just break entirely. They say, “Nope. Fuck it. Fuck these kids. There is such a thing as stupid people. There is such a thing as people who can’t be saved. Let them ruin their lives if they want. I’m getting paid the same anyway.” These teachers will play favorites in class, focusing all their attention on the ones they think have a chance and just ignoring or not caring about all the rest. And the school keeps them because there aren’t enough teachers, and definitely not enough who want to teach in dangerous ghetto neighborhoods.

Teachers from the ghetto

In moments like these, there’s also another kind of teacher. It’s usually the ex-gang member teacher. The guy who was a gang member for many years, killed and watched people get killed. Maybe even went to prison and now just got out.

This is a guy who turned his whole life around and now wants to come back to the neighborhood to help others not make the same mistake he did. I had several teachers like this. And they were so great to have. They told many stories that every student could relate to and provided solutions that ghetto students needed

For example…many gang members don’t even want to be in a gang anymore. But they’re stuck in a hard place. If they leave the gang, they’ll be unprotected against rival gang members. Also too, they’re gang might not let them leave. Or their gang wants them to do a dangerous task in order to leave (like killing a rival gang member or leader, or a really dangerous robbery).

Or some gang members decided they want to go to college but they’ve been failing all their classes and now don’t know what to do get the grades and put in college applications, etc. They don’t know where to begin. Or that they already committed a violent crime and now wonder if it’s even worth trying to apply to respectful jobs (that probably don’t hire criminals).

But most of all, they never had an authority figure who understood what they went through. I had one teacher like this named Mark Andrade. Really really cool super down to earth guy. You can tell he was a gangster, and you can also tell he’s not a gangster anymore. But he commanded respect when he spoke to kids…even ones that weren’t his. They knew he probably did a lot of street shit.

High school identity

I was uncool, short/small, and nerdy.

Probably the first thing you need when entering high school is an identity. And usually, what you look like is your identity. Although I was kind of a rebel kid, which sounds cool…I didn’t look like a rebel. I wore dorky clothes that my mom bought for me, and now wearing glasses because my vision got messed up, and I was short and small.

I looked like a nerd to everyone even if I wasn’t a straight student. It doesn’t matter anyway. I just looked “uncool” and that’s where I filed under in people’s minds.

New (and lifetime) best friend – Bryan Lee

He was another short Asian kid, also a son of Korean immigrants (just like my old best friend from Madison, Steve Hwang). We hit it off and became best friends immediately. We were the same size, similar sense of humor. And wouldn’t you know it…his parents have a horrible dysfunctional marriage as well and his dad is an absolute terrible human being.

We had everything necessary to get along, understand and identify with each other. We were almost inseparable at high school. He also came from Virgil Middle School (just that we didn’t meet there) and so we didn’t have to worry about bullying much as we had many friends from that school as well.

What happened to Steve? (my former best friend)

I tried to stay in touch with him but too much had changed. His life turned bad. His parents fought often (probably cuz of his dad’s constant know-it-all attitude and abusive behavior), and his mom left him.

Steve’s brothers joined gangs. And Steve himself would later go to jail. Later after all this, his parents get back together. Steve also has a kid (maybe 2?). And well…we just have very different lives today. I actually reached out to him as I thought of him while writing this. And we reconnected in Dec 2022 for the first time in maybe 20 years.

I also start selling candy at school.

A much more honorable line of business than porno magazines. Please don’t look at me as some kind of wonder-kid superstar entrepreneur. I didn’t invent the idea. I saw other kids were buying boxes of candy in bulk (getting wholesale discount price), and then selling the candy individually in class at a profit. It looked like easy money and so I did the same, also making easy money. If anything, it served to show me that I had a knack for business. And this business-expertise would later change my life as an adult.

Changing family dynamics

Different parent standards

Parents gave me different parenting standard from the ones they gave my brother. The way they saw it…I already got kicked out of the MAGNET program. I’ll never be accepted into medical school. I’ll never be the dream model straight-A son they always wanted. Those dreams were for my brothers now…which fit perfectly because Brian was getting straight A’s.

All my parents asked of me was that I went to school and didn’t come home in handcuffs. Just don’t join a gang, don’t do drugs, don’t get arrested. And don’t poison your brothers to be like you. And that’s it. And in a way, it was exactly what i wanted. To be free and live by my own standards.

And they even talked to us differently. Like when they were preaching the importance of school at dinner, I could tell they were intending that message really only for my brothers. They didn’t care if I listened or not. They didn’t bother to interrupt my dinner reading.

I didn’t love not being included in parent-child chats anymore. But I also loved the freedom of no longer feeling like I was their son. I totally felt like a foster child in my own home. Trading off love for freedom…it was an alright deal for me.

Challenging my father physically

I was now getting bigger and stronger to the point that my dad didn’t seem so scary anymore. (Always boys brains tend to develop in that way that makes them think they’re invincible.) And I was really starting to speak my mind around him. I wasn’t afraid to physically fight my father anymore. And a new man of the house was slowly emerging.

One day, I came home from school to find my brothers waiting for me. Harry was crying and told me that my father hit him with a metal pipe (as punishment for something he did wrong). I was enraged. What kind of fucken monster is he?! I told Harry I would take care of it.

That night just before dinner, while everyone was in the kitchen walking around and pulling things out of the cabinets….I walked right up to my father and said, “Don’t you ever hit Harry with a metal pipe again!”

My father was startled and taken aback. He got defensive and said, “But I have to discipline him! He did something wrong and I’m the parent here!” But I replied, “If you hit him, I’m going to hit you.” And even held up my fist to his face. Glaring at him eye-to-eye without breaking contact. There was a dead silence in the air and everybody knew Crazy Johnny was dead serious.

Well, my dad sure as hell didn’t like his manhood being challenged like that.

As I went to sit down at the dinner table with my brothers. My dad muttered something under his breath like, “…talking back to me now, huh?”

• Then he said, “HELP ME, GOOOOOOODDD!!!!”
• And as he screamed, he ran over to the knife drawer and lifted out the giant butcher’s meat cleaver knife, he held it up above his head.
• At this point…my mom ran over to tackle him. To prevent him from coming towards me. My brothers yelled, “RUN!” as I quickly got out of my chair and ran out the back door.

I called my new best friend (Bryan Lee) and set up a plan to stay at his house.

Hiding out at Bryan Lee’s house.

• Bryan Lee’s dad had a successful plumbing business. And with this they owned a huge house. With lots of space in which to hide me. The idea even seemed fun to him.
• But first…we had to wait until Bryan’s parents were asleep and then he would open the door for me to come over.
• He told me to meet him at his front door at 10:30pm. My plan was to hang around the neighborhood until then. My brothers had already snuck out some clothes, backpack, and school materials to me.
• Only problem was Bryan fell asleep and didn’t meet at the front door.
• By midnight, I was getting desperate and deathly afraid. Not only was his neighborhood scary like mine, but I didn’t know anybody from those streets. It was really dangerous for me to be hovering around there alone.
• I decided I would have to break into his house. And so I climbed over his security fences and really high walls like a ninja. Careful not to slash my legs on the many rings of sharp barbed wire across the top. (It’s not the first time I’ve climbed over security fences before.)
• Once I got across the wall…I still had to get into his house. All doors were locked. So now I scaled across the 2nd story walls and into his bedroom (on the 2nd floor). This would have been a great movie scene.
• Then I came up to him sleeping and said, “Hey you bastard! You forgot!” And he said sorry and apologized for falling asleep. He then told me to sleep in his closet, he had a big walk-in closet.
• In the morning, we were both caught off guard by his mother coming into the room to wake him up and telling to hurry and get dressed. I could hear her about to go into his closet so I got up and hid behind the clothes. She did go in and dug for something and then left to yell at his little brother Justin to wake up.
• Bryan crept slowly into his closet and whispered, “Johnny you in there?”
• I responded yes. Bryan and Justin were gonna get a ride to school. He told me to wait until they leave and then to leave the house.

Once we were at school, we had a lot more time to plan properly. Turns out his dad’s most trusted worker, Raul, had a room to stay in the house (it was connected to their kitchen). Since Raul wasn’t there (he was probably visiting family in Mexico or elsewhere)…the plan was for me to stay in Raul’s room.

Once we got home to his house, he told his brother Justin and all three of us were in on the biggest secrets of our lives. We would play together and then all of the sudden…we’d hear the garage door open (which meant one or both of their parents were home) and I’d quickly run into Raul’s room. Showering or going to the bathroom was best done before they got home.

In the room, they had snuck food and whatever else I might need to stay alive. Whenever they could while their parents were upstairs in the bathroom, him or his brother would run down to ask if I needed anything. They also gave me a huge metal bowl in which I would pee when I couldn’t hold it any longer. And sometimes because I had to walk around total darkness (not using any light so as to reveal someone was in there), I would accidentally step my foot into this bucket of my own piss. Hahaha…so gross!!!!

As long as I could keep quiet, I could stay there forever. And the secret worked perfectly. His parents never knew that his best friend was on the other side of that kitchen door during all their family dinners, hearing everything they said. And I was safe from my own parents. My parents were actually amazed I was gone for so long…totally self-sufficient. My mother even had my brothers passed me a message to ask if I was going to school. And I replied yes, so they weren’t worried.

2 whole weeks went by without me getting detected. Until one night when Bryan’s mom was in the kitchen cleaning. I was being so nosy and leaning up against the door trying to listen to what she was doing or saying. I was bored as hell being locked up in that room like a prisoner with no lights. So any outside noises were interesting to me. But I leaned up too hard on the door and the latch slipped through and the door fell open. With me frozen in full display. Bryan’s mom screamed! Then saw me and was like, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!….BRYANNNNNN! COME HERE RIGHT NOW!!!!”

Bryan came running down to the kitchen. And when he saw me he said, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!” (acting like he had no idea about it, and that I had broken into the house)

• It was absolutely cruel to me and his parents. He told them he would talk to me. Then when they were gone, he told me I needed to leave. So I left and went back home.
• With his parents…he had to beg them not to call the cops. They really thought I had broken in without his knowledge and lived in his house the whole time undetected. But they thought it was maybe only a couple days. I think many years later, he finally told the truth and that I needed a harboring space to hide out from my crazy dad.
• Hahahah…to this day, we still laugh about how he threw me under the bus. But I understand. His dad was a massive asshole too and it was probably no difference to me whether he took the blame or not. The end result was me having to be kicked out regardless. Since I was already caught, it’s better I take the blame as well.

The two Brian’s/Bryan’s in my life.

There was now 2 Brian’s in my life. My brother’s name is spelled Brian, and my best friend’s name is spelled Bryan. They were both brothers and best friends to me. And in a funny way…I could call out the name, “Brian!” or “Hey Bryan!” and somehow they would instinctively know exactly which one I was calling for.

Even though my brother Brian was 3.5 years younger than use. He was very mature for his age, also grew so fast that he was almost the same height as us. And he had a mustache too whereas we did not. Basically…we looked the part and seemed the part of a trio of best friends.

We skated, played games, went to the arcades, and hung around town together. And treated each other more or less as equals. Bryan Lee very quickly became a beloved friend of mine and my parents liked him a lot too (especially that he wasn’t a gangster or street kid). He used to call my mom “mom” a lot when he came over to the house.

For many years after this, I would often refer to the 2 Brians in my life for advice or opinions on important matters. Brian (my brother) usually offered the reason and what he personally preferred, Bryan (my friend) usually telling me what he thinks “Crazy Johnny” would be happy with.

Crazy uncle “Bean” moves to Los Angeles.

“Bean” or “Chu Bean” (which means “uncle Bean” in Vietnamese) is the uncle that unfortunately went crazy after that late night tragedy at his convenience store job. For years after the incident, he lived with my paternal grandparents in Florida driving them absolutely crazy at home. He was an absolute handful to say these least.

• Talking crazy all day long, from morning till night.
• He also did crazy things.
• My grandparents would also get into loud arguments with him.

But the most crazy of all, he sometimes acted very normal. It was hard for them to let him go because to some degree…their son was still there. There was also another reason they didn’t just leave him at the asylum…the “free” government money. The government can house him for free…or if the family takes him back in, the government gives you an allowance of $400/month at the time. And so my grandparents felt it was the “free” $400/month to take in their crazy son.

It got to a point where he was just too much and they couldn’t do it. They needed a break from him to keep from going crazy themselves, so they passed him around from one uncle’s family to the other. Each visit he spent was very short-lived as they James Bond’s kids couldn’t stand him, and neither could Scarface’s kids. My father, a middle child and with middle child syndrome (of always liking to please his parents), suggested to bring the Crazy Bean to Los Angeles.

At first, Bean stayed at the Gambler’s house. Which was ok when the Gambler was newly dating and working all day. But now he was married to his wife and just had a new baby (Nolan). Bean drove him absolutely crazy. And at times, he felt Bean might hurt his child. The Gambler even called the cops on Bean numerous times, demanding that they arrest him and put him in prison. When they refused…he would threaten them, “OK but if you don’t arrest him and something happens to me or my family, I’m going to sue you!”

Finally, my father made the decision to house our crazy uncle Bean at our house. He figured our house had plenty enough rooms to avoid him, the kids were grown up enough (and out of the house often), and both parents weren’t home much that nobody really had to deal with him much.

Living with our crazy uncle Bean.

It was an absolute disaster and a total nightmare to say the least. My mom absolutely hated the idea that my father made big decisions like this without her or the family’s approval. My brothers and I hated Bean. We had never met the normal version of him, he was crazy long before we met him, and only becoming crazier as time passed. Looking back, it was absolutely dangerous living with him. He could have killed us. And we greatly resent our father for doing such a favor for his parents at the cost of our mental health and physical livelihood.

He had an uncanny ability of appearing normal, right up until the moment he would say or do something crazy. To someone not living with him, “Uncle Bean” was an absolute hilarious character. But once you saw his truly crazy and sinister side, you were terrified forever.

Things that happened because of Bean:

He would talk normally at the kitchen table during meals. Appearing calm and “normal”. Then he would explode angrily out of nowhere. Telling our parents that their sons were the devil. That we forced him to eat poop and lick a prostitute’s vagina. He would become absolutely crazy and my dad would have to distract him so we could run out of the room. 5 minutes later, when he saw us in the hallway…he was back to being really nice and asking us “Hey, where’s your mom?” (Even though he had just seen her minutes before.)

My dad also copied a clever strategy from my grandparents. They would give Bean some money and let him wander around town. He’d be out around town all day long and then come home at night with new stories about people he met. Some of them logical, some of them making absolutely no sense (like the time he met Abraham Lincoln). There was also a time when he came home with a black eye. Sometimes he would get robbed or maybe beat up because of something foul he said to someone. It was a funny thing when my brothers and I were going around town or driving around town in a friend’s car, and somebody would say “HEY, IT’S UNCLE BEAN!”

Uncle Bean once took my dad’s prized guitar and sold it on the streets for $5. My dad was sooooo pissed. After that, he wouldn’t let him touch his things anymore. My uncle even tried to claim that it wasn’t him and that the event didn’t happen that way.

My brothers and I often had to coach our friends on their first visit to our house. “Ok, hey listen. Before you come in…we have to tell you something. We have a crazy uncle. Don’t look at him, don’t talk to him. Just avoid him no matter what! Run straight to our room and the bathroom if you need but do not talk to him!” Our friends almost never listened. He would say hi and they would say hi. He’d ask their name, and when they asked him the same, he’d say “My name is George Washington” and they’d laugh saying he was funny. One day our friend Jeffrey went to the bathroom and then we heard him screaming as he ran back. “OH MY GOD! CHU BEAN WENT CRAZY! HE TRIED TO KILL ME WITH A KNIFE!” At which point, we would all say “WE TOLD YOU SOOO!!!!”

• Now looking back, I’m not sure who if it was Chu Bean who inspired Harry to randomly start attacking us with knives. But Chu Bean was like that. Calm and pleasantly talkative one minute, and angry and dangerous the next. You really never knew what would happen.
• Uncle Bean made our house unbearable at times. Sometimes when our parents weren’t home, we didn’t want to be either. It really was like living with a crazy person in the house. As if we didn’t have enough problems already.

The doctors prescribed us medicine to give to him. It makes him sleepy and desensitized. And somehow he’s aware of it so he refuses to take his medicine at times. Sometimes we forced him but it only made him angry. Once we caught him only pretending to take his medicine and we designed another plan.

• We crushed the pills into powder and mixed it into the orange juice “Sunny Delight” that he loves to drink so much.
• But the family also loved Sunny Delight as well so we had 2 bottles in the fridge. His (with the medicine inside) was marked with an “X” on the cap and placed closest near the outside the shelf.
• One day, Jeffrey was over at our house again and went to the bathroom. When he came back he said, “Hey I hope you don’t mind I drank some of the Sunny Delight.” At which point my brothers and I panicked and asked, “OH NO!!! Which bottle did you drink?” Of course…he drank from Chu Bean’s bottle…but everything was ok.

Uncle Bean was also a parrot who would listen to everything in the house and then repeat what he heard at the most inconvenient times. And since he was a crazy person, we often lived our lives around him as if he wasn’t there. Talking freely on the phone or arguing with each other as if he wasn’t a real person who could understand our most private details. But funny thing…he would randomly repeat things at family gatherings revealing the most embarrassing things, while mixed in with his usual crazy ramblings.

• One dinner he said something like….”Elephants are in the sky, there’s a car in my stomach, Uncle Ban likes Mai, I’m the president of the universe.”
• At which point, EVERYBODY’s eyes would just widen in horror and amusement. Uncle Ban (my gambler uncle) of course would then dismiss liking my father’s mistress. He’d try to brush it off with a, “Oh shut up, Bean. You talking crazy again!” But the whole family knew better.
• And Uncle Bean would do this often. Embarrassing every member of the family in their most vulnerable ways. And we’d always know when he was talking crazy or telling the truth. Hahahaha. Sometimes, friends of my parents would mischievously encourage him even more. Hoping he’d spill more delicious gossip.

Mom graduates from California State University of Los Angeles (CSULA)

After 5 years of university, and having failed (and retaken) some English classes, my mother finally graduates with her bachelors degree in biology. It was truly a glorious step for her. She was now knocking on the door of impossibility. Mother of 3 boys and now graduating age 40 with a bachelors. She had now become equal to the most educated member of my dad’s family…the Gambler (who had a bachelors in Business Administration).

She had ALMOST shut up one person and prove him completely wrong. The one really mean brother of my grandfather, the one who famously stood in front of my dad’s entire family telling me mom she was stupid for thinking she was even smart enough and could get a degree as an immigrant woman of such old age. She almost shut him up, but he died a year before she graduated. Perhaps had she not failed some classes, she might have done it in time. His words still haunted her all those years and would continue to do so for many more.

Although it took my mom so much to get here, everybody else (my father’s family) barely acknowledged her success. They felt she was silly to spend so much time in school instead of being a good mother. They felt she had only done the easy part. That the hard part was still ahead of her and remains to be seen whether she could accomplish it.

To some degree, they were right. It was now time for my mom to apply to dental school at age 40.